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Plot
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In 1979, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is a 13 year old boy living in the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio. The film starts just after the funeral for Joe's mother, who was crushed to death in an industrial factory accident. Joe's father, Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler) is the deputy sheriff of Lillian. He is emotionally detached from Joe and doesn't exactly know how to communicate and bond with him.
Four months later, as summer break begins, Joe's friend, Charles (Riley Griffiths) begins ramping up production of his low budget Super 8 zombie movie. He enrolls the help of their friends, Preston (Zach Mills), Martin (Gabriel Basso), Tom (Josh McFarland) and Alice (Elle Fanning). One late night, unlicensed Alice uses her father's car to take the entire crew to an old train depot outside of town to shoot a scene of the zombie movie. During the production, they witness a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks towards an oncoming train, causing a massive derailment. The kids approach the truck and discover Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman), their biology teacher, behind the wheel of the truck. He instructs them to forget what they saw - otherwise, they and their families will be killed. The Air Force arrives to secure the crash site while the kids flee. However, the commanding officer, Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), finds one of the used film camera boxes that the kids left behind and suspects Woodward purposely had someone film and document the wreck.
For several days, strange phenomena begin occurring all over town. All the dogs in the town ran away. Electronics, household appliances and entire car engines begin to vanish. And several people are reported missing. The town's electricity seems to randomly go in and out. Meanwhile, the Air Force are sweeping through town as if searching for something. The local sheriff is abducted by some sort of alien creature
Meanwhile, the Air Force deliberately start a wildfire outside the town to give them an excuse to evacuate the entire town to the local Air Force base and detain them.
She was not supposed to have been working that day but was filling in for Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard), an alcoholic who had been drinking that morning and called in sick. Louis's daughter, Alice (Elle Fanning) attends the same school as Joe.
After days of strange phenomena (pets running away, microwaves disappearing, car engines vanishing, people being abducted), the Air Force deliberately starts a wildfire outside the town to give them a pretense to evacuate the entire population to the local Air Force base. While there, Joe runs into Louis, who tells him that a creature abducted Alice.
The kids convince someone to drive them back to their school, where they break into Woodward's stash of confiscated items, thinking he may have hidden documents there. In papers, film, and audio recordings that they find, they discover that the government imprisoned an extraterrestrial that crashed its ship on Earth in 1958. The alien was tortured and treated poorly even though it apparently only wished to return home. One film shows that Woodward was a researcher at the time and was attacked by the alien, which causes him to emotionally bond with it. Thus, his crashing into the train was an attempt to free the creature.
Joe's father makes his way to the air base but was under military arrest. He then attacks one of the men and puts on his uniform and fires at a propane truck as a distraction to slip away from the base and head to where everyone was evacuated to.
Colonel Nelec and his men storm the school and capture Joe, Carey, Charles, and Martin. While on the bus ride back to the Air Force base, they are attacked by the creature and the bus flips on its side. Nelec's men are killed while Joe and his friends escape by breaking through the glass windows of the vehicle. The creature kills Nelec after a brief stand-off by smashing his head.
The kids head through the neighborhood, which is now under heavy fire. They enter one of the abandoned houses and are hit by an explosion which leaves Martin injured. Charles stays behind to look after Martin while Joe and Carey go to save Alice.
Joe finds the creature's subterranean lair near the cemetery where his mother is buried. He manages to rescue Alice by having Carey use his fireworks as a distraction. They also rescue the town's sheriff and another woman. As they make their escape, the sheriff and the woman are killed.
The creature grabs Joe, and Joe tells the creature that "bad things happen, and it's no one's fault… I'm sorry" and tries to convince it to leave peacefully. The creature somehow understands and lets him go. Shortly after, all the missing metal reappears, as a ship begins to take form around the town water tower. Joe's necklace is also sucked upwards and, after a moment, he decides to let it go. The movie ends with the star-like ship blasting off towards the creature's home planet while Joe and Alice hold hands.
Over the end credits, the movie that Charles and his friends were working on (The Case) is shown.